Life and works of Władysław Podkowiński

Public Domain Image: Self-portrait (1887), oil on canvas painting by Władysław Podkowiński, dimensions 55 cm x 45 cm (21.65 in x 17.72 in), located at Muzeum Śląskie, Katowice in Silesia in southern Poland.

Public Domain Image: Szał uniesień (Ecstasy), oil on canvas painting (1894) by Polish painter Władysław Podkowiński (1866-1895), dimensions 275 cm x 310 cm (108.27 in x 122.05 in) currently located at Sukiennice Museum (aka Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art at Sukiennice), a division of the National Museum, Kraków, Poland.

Szał uniesień (titled in English as‘Ecstasy’ or ‘Frenzy of Exultations’, also known as ‘La Folie’ or ‘Ekstase’) is the best known painting of Władysław Podkowiński, and which is considered the first work of symbolism in Polish art, which was exhibited in Zachęta in an atmosphere of scandal, and in 1894 it was featured in a Warsaw art exhibition. However, the art exhibition lasted only 36 days because Podkowinski brought a knife on the 37th day and destroyed his work. The painting was later restored after the death of Podkowiński.

Public Domain Image: Akt (Nude) painting (1892) by Władysław Podkowiński

Władysław Podkowinski (1866-1895) was a Polish painter and illustrator. Podkowiński began his artistic training at Wojciech Gerson's drawing school, the Warsaw Academy of Arts, at which he studied from 1880 to1884. After leaving the school, Podkowinski contributed his art to many of the leading art journals in Warsaw. In 1885 along with Josef Pankiewicz, he travelled to the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Academy where he studied from 1885 to 1886. After returning from St. Petersburg in 1886, Podkowiński started his career as an illustrator for Tygodnik Ilustrowany where he became one its most renowned artists.

Władysław Podkowiński’s earliest works comprising watercolor and oil paintings were created during this time, but Podkowiński still considered his art as a hobby, and not a professional endeavor. His early paintings were mainly influenced by Ignacy Aleksander Gierymski (1850-1901), another Polish painter of the late 19th century.

Władysław Podkowiński embraced painting as a profession in 1889, after a trip to Paris where he was profoundly influenced by French Impressionist painters, particularly Claude Monet. Podkowiński’s impressionist works were highly appreciated, and later he was credited for bringing the Impressionist movement to Poland, and many art historians and writers consider him as the founder of Polish Impressionism. But towards the end of his life, his personal life experiences, including an incurable disease of those times, inclined him to shift towards Symbolism. Władysław Podkowiński died of tuberculosis in Warsaw at the young age of 29, which cut short a very promising career, and of course, it was a great loss to the lovers of art.

French Artist Paul Cezanne

Photo of Paul Cézanne taken in 1861

French artist and Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) is credited with works that laid the foundations of transition from the 19th century concept of art to a radically different art form of the 20th century. Cezanne is also considered as the bridge between Impressionism and the early stages of Cubism.

Paul Cezanne's works symbolize mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship, and a style dominated by repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes. He used vibrant colors and brushstrokes that built up the perceptions for the observers’ eyes, from an abstraction of the observed nature, thereby exploring the complexity of human visual perception.

At the age of ten, Paul Cezanne entered the Saint Joseph school in Aix where he studied drawing under the Spanish monk Joseph Gibert. In 1852 Cézanne joined the College Bourbon (now College Mignet) where he became friends with Emile Zola and Baptistin Baille.

His early work is often concerned with figures and landscapes. Later, he became more interested in painting from direct observations. Throughout his life he struggled to develop an authentic observation of the seen world by the most accurate method of representing it in paint that he could find. For this, he structurally incorporated whatever he perceived into simple forms and colour planes.

Cezanne tried to simplify whatever he observed to their geometric elements such as cylinders, spheres, cones and other geometric forms. As a result, his painted observations of nature resulted in an exploration of binocular vision, which results in two slightly different simultaneous visual perceptions. Such visual representation coupled with Cézanne's desire to capture the truth of his own perception compelled him to render the outlines of forms so as to display the distinctly different views of both the left and right eyes. Thus Cezanne's work augments and transforms the earlier ideas of perspective, in particular single-point perspective.

Cezanne's paintings were shown in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refusés in 1863, which displayed works not accepted by the jury of the official Paris Salon. The Salon rejected Cézanne's paintings every year from 1864, and Cézanne continued to submit his works to the Salon until 1882, when, through the intervention of fellow artist Antoine Guillemet, Cézanne exhibited Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, Father of the Artist (l'Evénement). It was his first and last successful submission to the Salon.

Cezanne exhibited his works twice with the Impressionists -- at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Despite his increasing popularity and financial success, Cézanne chose to work in isolation. He concentrated on a few themes and was proficient in genres like still lives, portraits, landscapes and studies of bathers.

Image: Léda au cygne (1880-82), Paul Cezanne’s version of ‘Leda and the swan’, dimensions 59.8 cm x 75 cm, located at The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania

One day Paul Cezanne was caught in a storm while working in the field. After working for two hours under a downpour he decided to go home but on the way he collapsed. He was taken home by a passing driver. The next day too he insisted on working, but later on he fainted. The model with whom he was working called for help and he was put to bed, and he died of pneumonia a few days later, on 22 October 1906. Paul Cezanne was buried at the old cemetery in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence.

Manet's 'Self-Portrait with Palette' sold for $33.4 million

Photo: Self-Portrait with Palette (1879), oil on canvas painting by Edouard Manet, dimensions 83 cm x 67 cm (33 in x 26 in), private collection.

A self-portrait by French painter Edouard Manet, titled Self-Portrait with Palette, has sold for a record price of over $33.4 million at an auction in London, Sotheby's said. It was the highest price paid for a picture by Manet.

The French artist Edouard Manet’s 1879 impressionistic painting ‘Self-Portrait with Palette’ (also known by names such as Autoportrait a la palette, Portrait de Manet par lui-même, Manet à la palette, Selbstporträt mit Palette), is one of his two self-portraits and the only one in private collection, the other being ‘Self-Portrait with Cap’ (1879) currently in the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan.

Self-Portrait with Palette has been described as one of the greatest self-portraits in the entire canon of art history. It is the only self-portrait by Manet in which he depicted himself as an artist, though he depicted himself in several other paintings as one of many figures in large compositions in such works as Fishing (1860-61), Music in the Tuileries (1862), and The Ball of the Opera (1873). The painting shows Manet working with his left hand, but it is believed for certain that he was not left-handed, and hence the painting shows a mirror image of him. Also, watch his coat lapel and pocket that clearly indicates a mirror reflection of him, which was used as a model for the painting.

When art historian and Manet’s biographer Adolphe Tabarant asked Manet's stepson Léon Leenhoff about the time at which Manet had been stricken with Syphilis, Leenhoff said it was in 1879, which explains why Manet, who had never before painted a self-portrait, had painted two within that year, possibly with the reality of near-future death, he felt a need to come to terms with himself.

At the auction of the Loeb collection (owned by the collector couple John and Frances L. Loeb from New York) on 12 May 1997, the painting was sold for $18.7 million to the Casino developer Steve Wynn, though it was acquired by the Loebs for $176,800. Steve Wynn displayed Self-Portrait with Palette in his hotel, Hotel Bellagio and Wynn, Las Vegas. In March 2005, it was privately sold to Steven A Cohen, a high profile art collector and hedge fund manager, who, it is speculated, might have paid between $35 million to $40 million.

According to 7 May 2010 reports, Steven A Cohen decided to auction the painting at Sotheby's on 22 June 2010, at an expected price of $30-$45 million. Though it could not live up to his maximum expectations, the painting was sold for a record $33.4 million to the New York dealer Franck Giraud, who was bidding at Sotheby’s sale in London. The Manet painting was among 51 lots in Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art works in a series of auctions in London over the fortnight.

The previous highest price paid for a Edouard Manet was £17.8 million ($26.4 million) for the 1878 street scene ‘La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux’ at Christie’s in New York in November 1989.

Henri Matisse’s ‘Odalisques jouant aux dames’ (1928) was sold for more than £11 million. In February an Alberto Giacometti bronze sculpture has become the most expensive piece of art to be sold at an auction after it was sold in London for more than £65 million.

London this week is hosting a number of auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art works with sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams. The other highlights of the auction were paintings by Henri Matisse, André Derain and Chaïm Soutine, which have never appeared at auction before.

Art investment pundits predict that works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse will lead auctions at the top end of the art market, as it is recovering from the biggest slump since 1991.

Olympia (1863) by Edouard Manet

Image: Olympia (1863), oil on canvas painting of dimensions 130.5 cm x 190 cm (51.4” x 74.8”) by French painter Édouard Manet (1832-1883), currently located at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

France acquired Manet’s Olympia in 1890 with a public subscription organized by Claude Monet. Édouard Manet’s early masterworks ‘The Luncheon on the Grass’ and ‘Olympia’ kicked up a great controversy, but they were credited to have become the rallying points for the young generation of painters who created Impressionism, and today these are considered as watershed paintings that mark the genesis of Modern Art.

In Olympia what shocked audiences of those days was neither Olympia's nudity nor her fully clothed maid, but her confrontational gaze and other details identifying her as a courtesan. The orchid flower adoring her hair, black ribbon around her neck, her bracelet, pearl earrings, her cast-off slipper, and the oriental shawl on which she lies, were symbols of wealth and sensuality and they added to the work’s voluptuous look.

Edouard Manet used Victorine Meurent, a very popular model for painters and artists those days for Olympia, and Victorine Meurent was a painter of repute in her own right and she went on to become an accomplished painter.